Analysing Weekend Travel Characteristics in Seoul

Abstract

Trip demands and patterns on weekends have been changed significantly over the past decade due to the income growth and the spread of the 5-day workweek in Korea. The increased weekend trips for shopping, leisure activities, entertainment and friendship have exacerbated traffic congestion in major highways or principal arterial roads from Friday afternoon through Sunday. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on travel demand forecasts and transport policies for weekend trips by investigating specific characteristics of the trips. Previous research efforts focus on simple analysis of characteristics of weekend trips and comparison of travel characteristics between weekdays and weekends. The paper analyzes the differences between weekday and weekend trips via statistical analyses to derive multiple types of characteristics of weekend trips, and develops Tobit models to identify key factors that may affect the number of trips, using Seoul city`s weekend trip survey data in 2006. The model results show that weekend trips appear differently from weekdays by household or individual characteristics. Age, residence area and type of residence affected the number of trips, regardless of the type of the day, whereas gender, occupation, income, presence of household vehicle showed different impacts on trips between weekdays and weekends.